Fostering Collaboration between Citizen Science projects
Each project's team has access to the SPOTTERON Partner Forum, in which the platform's development progress and announcements have their home and the option to exchange with other projects. Furthermore, we run a Discord channel with a distinct user role for project partners for an instant way to get in contact. But collaboration on SPOTTERON runs deeper. To lessen the time efforts for single projects, we have established a shared environment for all projects, which allows the utilization of all features and tools developed on the platform in a single project. From a user's perspective, participating in more than one project on SPOTTERON is also easy. A user account works in all the Apps and toolkits on the platform. We see cross-project participation of especially power-users across the board, strengthening a broader science involvement and promotional synergies for universities, stakeholders, or institutions when running more than one project on the platform.
Project Ecosystem Features
Cross-project participation
Users can log in with one user account in all project Apps, creating synergies for promotion and allowing multi-App participation.
Configurability and adaptation
We design all new features configurable and flexible for the various practical cases to increase the re-use value and cross-project adaptation.
Platform feature sharing
Features funded by one project are available for all other projects on the platform without adding development costs.
Project collaboration
On SPOTTERON, we actively support collaboration between the projects on the platform and exchanging ideas and experiences.
All Features included already at the launch of a Citizen Science App
Modern Applications with user participation at their core come with a wide range of needs. To make it possible for a Citizen Science App to run a broader range of user-oriented and project-specific features, we have created the SPOTTERON Project Ecosystem to enable the collaboration between projects beyond data exchange. On the platform, funded and developed features are shared among every project for free use, making it possible to utilize many modern functionalities from the start and build on the already finished work of each other.
How new features come to your App
For every running App on the SPOTTERON Platform, we regularly publish App Updates that improve app performance and compatibility and include newly developed features for both project teams and users. Frequent App Updates also help with the dissemination. By continuously extending the scope of a project, users of the App find a dynamic and living environment that increases motivation and appeal for participation.